


Look for the Helpers

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU
Genre: Clark Kent (mentioned) - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Needs A Hug, Gen, Good Big Brother Dick Grayson, Grief/Mourning, I Made Myself Cry, Jason Todd Needs A Hug, Lots of Crying, Soft Boi Brothers, a peek at pre-Robin Jason Todd, real-world death discussed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 23:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16607108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: Dick wondered if he would ever be used to the feeling of disconnect that came after a disaster.A lunch out turns into a ton of crying and some hugging.I really need to learn how to write summaries.





	Look for the Helpers

Dick wondered if he would ever be used to the feeling of disconnect that came after a disaster. It felt like… He stabbed at a macaroni noodle and considered the radiant numbness spreading out from his chest.

It felt, Dick decided after a moment, a little like being in free fall. There was the moment when your body hit terminal velocity, when air resistance and the pull of gravity were perfectly equal and you could fall no faster or slower, and it felt like flying. You were plummeting toward Earth and a fatally sudden stop, but it didn’t feel real, that danger. You were untethered, unmoored from the bonds of the world below and the heavens above, with no strings to hold you down.

The wake of a disaster felt like that. It was real, too real, but it felt like a dream. Surely, this wasn’t real. The still smoking piles of rubble downtown weren’t real. The never-ending white noise of sirens rushing to and fro weren’t real. The loss. The devastation. The chaos. None of it seemed real, no matter how many times it happened.

At least Gotham hadn’t been badly hit. Dick scowled into his mac ’n’ cheese, then quickly smoothed out his expression. Did that make him an awful person, to feel grateful that their part in the disaster had been limited to some errant space debris that had crashed into the business district? Because he did feel grateful, as a vigilante, as a police officer, and as a Gothamite. He was glad his city had been spared, even if it meant that another city had taken a larger share of the blow.

A much larger share.

Dick tried not to think about it, and instead leaned across the table to eye what Tim was doodling on his placemat.

“I don’t think human eyes are supposed to be that big,” he remarked solemnly, which prompted a snort of laughter from the others and placid disregard from Tim.

“It’s anime, Dickie, don’t be so uncool.” Jason’s faux-whine made it clear that he was not, in fact, defending Tim’s artwork.

“It’s a legitimate art form, and you both are snobs,” Tim said, his tone unruffled as he reached for his sandwich with his right hand, his left never slowing as he traced the warrior girl’s floating hair in purple crayon.

“It is,” Damian agreed, which surprised Dick until he added, “when done correctly.”

“Oh, bite me,” Tim retorted, but without any heat.

“Is that Steph?” Jason asked, head now tilted to get a better look at Tim’s drawing. Intrigued, Dick craned his neck as well.

“What? No!” _Now_ Tim’s head snapped up, and he glared at Jason as one arm curled protectively around the crayon drawing. Dick would have been inclined to argue that the drawing could have been of anyone, as Tim wasn’t quite good enough to render a clear likeness. But the tips of Tim’s ears were pink.

“Jason, if you lean over any farther, you’re going to knock over your soup,” Dick pointed out instead.

Jason scowled, but settled back in his chair. “I’d make a joke, but one, we don’t make gags about Nazis anymore, and two, that show is old as dirt.”

“Hear hear,” Tim muttered as he carefully folded his drawing and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

“I don’t know what either of you are talking about,” Damian groused as he tore his bread into pieces and popped them one by one into his mouth.

Beneath the table, Dick tapped his fingertips together, one after the other. The numbness was still there, but if he didn’t think about it, it receded from the foreground. Not lessened or disappeared, just backed away to hover like a thin blanket over everything except what he was focusing on, which in turn made what he was focusing on seem harshly bright and loud.

That was okay, though, if what he was focusing on was his brothers. Dick popped another forkful of cheesy noodles into his mouth and studied them, careful to keep a slight smile on his face as he did.

All things considered, they seemed okay. A little distracted, maybe, a little edgy, but that was why Alfred had forced them out of the Manor to begin with. After two weeks of backchannel monitoring and research during the day and heightened patrols at night, they needed the break. Alfred had nearly chased them out of the house with a broom, and Dick could only imagine what he had threatened Jason with to make him meet them at the diner. Although, now that Dick thought about it, perhaps there hadn’t been much threatening at all. They all tended to huddle a little closer together when Bruce was away.

Only Cass had been allowed to stay at the Manor. She and Alfred were planning a Masterpiece Theater Poirot mystery binge, with some Miss Marple and Jeeves and Wooster thrown in for flavoring. Dick wasn’t sure how much of the dialogue Cass could follow, but she seemed to find it a fun challenge to identify the murderer by body language alone. And anyone could enjoy the comedy of old J&W.

Jason was picking at Tim, who pretended to be grumpy and ignored his aggravating older brother in favor of tackling his roast beef sandwich with both hands. Damian would pipe up at random intervals, mostly trying to get Jason’s attention, but sometimes taking a jab at Tim. One or another would ask Dick a question, which he would answer, and the lunch went on.

And yet even as they presented the perfect portrait of four contentious but happy brothers enjoying an afternoon out, there were small cracks in the facade. There were tiny bubbles of silence when they were caught between topics, and the frowns would return, furrows encroaching on darkened brows. They were all being larger versions of themselves—Tim quieter and more insulated, Damian more outspoken and demanding, Jason more caustic and ribald. Even Dick found himself scrambling for more jokes and laughing louder than the situation warranted. They were each shadow puppets for the others, putting on a pantomime to distract from the darkness.

In violation of Alfred’s rules, they had all kept their phones out, facedown on the table but ready should a text or call came through, and texts did come through frequently. Tim and Damian fielded the most messages, which made sense. Dick was sure their support was welcome, as were their distractions for the recipients on the other end. Dick took a few texts himself, mostly to coordinate the efforts and to relay the continued lack of news. Jason received none, though Dick caught him peeking at the screen once or twice.

More common, however, was to catch someone’s gaze drifting up toward the television mounted behind the diner counter. The screen displayed the news, the volume low but audible, as Dick imagined every television in the country had been for the past two weeks, and the coverage showed nothing new. There were the same breathtaking shots of the invasion, the panning coverage of the devastation left behind, the blurred blue streak shooting up into the sky, the same talking heads discussing the aftermath and the potential of what they had lost.

Dick ducked his head as a familiar face filled the screen—Superman, a lone curl tumbling charmingly down his forehead, his chin turned to stare bravely into the distance. It was a stupid photo, boldly heroic in none of the ways that made Clark truly brave. That was the point, he knew, of a secret identity—no strong points of connection—but it rankled him to see the man portrayed as a stoic bastion of strength instead of the smiling, gentle man who used to pick Dick up by his ankles and swing him upside down.

But that was how these things went. Those that left were free to be reshaped into whatever was needed by those who were left behind. A beloved friend. A solemn warrior. A good soldier.

Officially, no one had given up hope. After Superman had shot into space and defeated the invaders, the sky had been filled with a blinding flash of light… but no body. The Justice League had immediately gone searching and were still searching two weeks later. The other members of the superhero community did their best to fill the power void, especially in Metropolis, which had been hardest hit and was now missing its white knight, though the Kent boys and Kara did their best.

It was possible that Clark was alive, Dick reminded himself. More than possible, actually. It wouldn’t be the first time someone in their circle had cheated death. He was aware of his brothers still bickering around him and smiled.

In fact, it wasn’t even Clark’s first time. Superman had out-foxed the Grim Reaper before on several occasions, though it had been a while. The last near miss had been during Jason’s absence. If he paid attention to the screen, Dick was pretty sure he could pick out some of the footage the news had used for the last en memoriam montage, even if this time they were being more circumspect and calling it a “retrospective.”

Dick risked another peek up at the screen and almost snorted with maudlin amusement. Yes, it was all there. Superman’s first appearance in Metropolis. Superman kissing a baby. Superman performing the eulogy at Mr. Rogers’ funeral. Superman shaking hands with the President. Superman duking it out with General Zod. Superman—

Dick’s attention was wrenched away by the loud clatter of a metal diner chair crashing against the linoleum floor. Jason pushed by so quickly that Dick’s only impression was of a tightly clenched jaw and a tan leather jacket before his brother disappeared out the diner door and into the parking lot.

“What happened?” Dick demanded of the two remaining boys. He had expected Tim to look sheepish or Damian surly, but instead both were staring with similarly startled expressions.

“I don’t know,” Tim said. “We weren’t even talking. I was teasing Damian about his weirdly small mouth—“

“My mouth is adequately sized!” Damian railed, cutting off Tim’s narration. “We needn’t all stretch our maws to fit our clown-sized feet, Drake.”

Dick clamped a firm hand onto Damian’s shoulder and shoved the boy back into his seat before he could crawl over the table to stab Tim with his fork.

“Jason,” he reminded both of them.

Tim shrugged. “You were both watching the TV, I think, and he just… left.” Despite the nonchalance of his shrug, Tim’s bottom lip had disappeared between his teeth, a sure sign he was worried.

Dick hesitated a moment more, then pushed back his chair and stood, jacket in hand. “You two wait here.”

Both boys immediately protested, but Dick waved them off. “It’s—“ It’s safer? It’s Jason, so who knows what he might do? “He’s more likely to talk if it’s just me, and I don’t want our waitress to think we’re ditching. Stay here and finish your lunch. I’ll be back.”

Dick pulled on his jacket as he pushed his way out the door and looked wildly around the parking lot. He didn’t know what to expect. Jason wreaking destruction on nearby parked cars, maybe. Or Jason’s bike gone, his brother already well out of sight and out of reach.

He jogged down the rows of parked cars to where they had left their vehicles, his eyes scanning, then latched onto Jason’s motorcycle helmet. It was lying overturned on the asphalt yards away from the bike. Thrown, maybe? Dick picked up the helmet and returned it to the motorcycle. But where was—

The diner was nestled between a rising skyscraper and a small neighborhood park, the kind community developers liked to slot into any little niche so that they could advertise nearby green space to prospective renters. It was no more than a small patch of green ringed with trees, bisected by a path with a small, two-tiered fountain in the middle. This neighborhood had been untouched by the extraterrestrial destruction, and the paths were at a midday lull, soft greys and greens and whites unbroken except for a jogger here, a mother and child there, a dogwalker off in the distance.

Jason stood under one of the trees, his back to Dick and the diner. The tree’s trunk had a pale gash in it low to the earth, where Jason had kicked it, Dick suspected. Jason’s shoulders rose and fell with furious, gulping breaths, and his fingers dug into the bark like he wanted to rip the entire tree from the earth and chuck it across the park.

Dick hurried over, cautious but eager to intercept his brother before any innocent bystander got caught in the crossfire.

“Jay,” Dick began, then his steps faltered as Jason quickly turned to face him, the back of his wrist swiping at his eyes. “Are you… crying?”

Jason snarled, and the unnatural Pit-green glow that Dick had expected to see in his eyes flared, then subsided as Jason turned away again. Dick, used to his own ability to adapt on the fly, struggled to regain his equilibrium.

“Jay?” he tried again, stepping closer but careful to stay just out of reach.

From what Dick could remember, even before, Jason had hated to show weakness. Though more expressive than Bruce by far, he hid his fears and sorrows beneath anger and rage. He had, in many ways, been more vulnerable with Bruce than Dick had been, willing to confront and challenge the older man when upset, but he had hated being coddled. The safest thing to do when Jason was in turmoil was to give him space and return when the dust had settled. That certainly had not changed with the return of the new, more volatile Jason. But it didn’t sit right with Dick to walk away, either. Something was very wrong if Jason Todd was upset enough to cry.

Jason’s shoulders continued to quake, and now Dick recognized it not as the shudders of a danger on the verge of a meltdown, but as that of a man desperately trying to regain his composure. Dick watched as Jason lifted a hand to his eyes again, then drove a fist into the tree.

With slow steps, deliberately shuffled in the fallen leaves for Jason to track, Dick stepped up next to his brother. Jason kept his head bent, and Dick turned his gaze to the park.

“What happened?” he asked quietly.

“It’s stupid,” Jason muttered.

“Maybe.” Dick tried to remember everything he had seen Bruce do right and everything he had seen Bruce do wrong. “But it’s still important to you, so it’s important to me. Tell me.”

“I thought…” Jason slumped to the side until his shoulder rested against the tree. “I thought it’d taken everything it could. I lost a year of my life, my family, my home, my sanity.” He barked out a laugh, raspy and rough and dark with bitterness. “What else could I lose, right?”

What else, indeed? Dick’s heart ached for his little brother, but his mind was still scrambling to put together the pieces into some kind of sense. Was this about Clark? But what did Clark have to do with Jason’s death?

Jason sighed, a long, soft breath that sounded like it had been slowly dragged up from deep in his stomach. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet and stripped of Jason’s usual posturing. “My mom wasn’t… she tried, but she wasn’t always around, you know?”

Dick didn’t nod, but he knew what Jason meant. Bruce had told him about the drugs and the neglect, though he had also told Dick how much Jason had meant to her. How much Jason had adored her.

“We had one tiny TV and I had to sit up close to see anything. It was fuzzy a lot of the time, and we didn’t have cable, just local channels, but it was something. I’d turn it on sometimes when Mom was… away. Just for the noise.”

Dick could see it—a squalid little apartment, a woman passed out on the couch, and a little boy sitting almost directly beneath a small, staticky television, his eyes on the screen to block out the rest of his world.

“There’d be different stuff on. Cooking shows, soap operas I didn’t understand, car chases, that kind of stuff. But my favorite was this one show.”

In the corner of his eye, Dick could see Jason swallow hard, then look up and out across the park.

“It wasn’t exciting or really funny. It was just this… this old guy. He’d come in to this clean house and hang up his jacket and take off his shoes and sing. He’d tell stories with these stupid puppets, and he never yelled or got mad. And he’d talk right to me. Every time, it was like he was talking right to me.”

Jason swiped at his eyes again, fast, hard. “I guess it was because it was public access and they didn’t have a lot of other programming, but it felt like every time I needed him, he was on. Even when I got older, I’d turn him on sometimes, because no matter how scared or angry or sad I was, I knew he’d fix it. He’d tell me he was proud of me, that I was special, that I was okay just the way I was.”

Jason sucked in a shuddering breath, then huffed another broken laugh. “I told myself I’d be just like him when I grew up. Not with the geeky cardigan or anything, but someone that would make Mister Rogers proud. When B offered to take me in and make me… I thought that was it. I could be a helper, someone who made other people feel safe, who made a difference.”

Instead, he had ended up a murder victim and a killer. Dick wanted to pull Jason into a hug and let him know that he could still make a difference, that he _had_ made a difference in Crime Alley, even if they still butted heads over methodology sometimes. He didn’t need to be ashamed of who he was.

But then Jason whispered, “I didn’t know he’d died.” And Dick’s stomach dropped like a ten-ton weight.

Fred Rogers had died a few years back. It had been all over the news. The nation had mourned. Clark had attended the service as Superman and had given the eulogy, the epitome of hope honoring the epitome of goodness. And Jason had been oceans away, lost in the fog of trauma and bloodlust and the Pit.

Jason was already pushing off the tree, his hand dragging violently through his hair, his limbs atremble with restless energy. “It’s stupid,” he spat, grief trying to gather itself back into protective rage. “We never met. I didn’t know him. He was just… just some guy… some guy on TV. He didn’t… He wasn’t… I…”

Dick reached out and caught Jason as he crumbled. They knelt together in the dirt, Dick’s arms wrapped around his little brother’s broad shoulders, Jason quaking with quiet sobs, until Dick’s legs began to burn. He sat and pulled Jason in. After a moment’s resistance—nothing was easy with Jason, not even now—the other man let himself be manhandled into leaning into Dick as he wept into his own hands.

They had never done anything like this, even before. Dick had been too busy being Nightwing to be a big brother, and Jason had had no reason to trust him. But that didn’t mean Dick couldn’t be here now, to make up for all his failures before. He pressed his lips to Jason’s scalp, then rested his cheek atop the man’s head and waited.

Only when Jason’s tears had slowed and his breaths had subsided into frame-jolting hiccups did Dick say, “It’s not stupid. You don’t have to meet someone for them to be important to you. That’s why we do what we do. You don’t have to meet someone to be their hero.”

Dick could feel a tear or two wash down his own face as he tightened his hold on his brother’s shoulders. “He _would_ be proud of you, you know. He wasn’t the kind of guy to ask for perfection, right? Just that you try. He’d be so proud, Jay.”

“Why, because you are?” Jason had tried for sardonic, but the wry jab came out waterlogged and muffled between sniffles.

“Yeah. Yeah, I am,” Dick murmured.

They sat together in companionable silence to wait as Jason’s tears ceased and his breath evened out. Dick kept one arm draped loosely across Jason’s shoulders, and they watched the carousel of daily life turn about the park.

“Thanks,” Jason said quietly, “for not… I don’t know.”

“Making fun of you?” Dick supplied, then shook his head. “Nothing to make fun of, Little Wing. Besides, I’d be the last person to get away with that. When Robin Williams died, I bawled for a week.”

Then Dick jolted with a sudden bolt of horror. “You knew about that one, right?”

Jason huffed a breath out his nose. “Yeah, D. It’s okay.”

“He is correct,” offered a voice from behind them. Both men stiffened as Damian and Tim came up from behind and sat next to Dick, Jason from embarrassment and Dick in preemptive restraint.

“He did weep for a week,” Damian continued as he straightened out the line of his trousers, then looked over at Jason. “But there is nothing shameful in mourning the dead.”

“He was kind,” Dick said with a wistful fondness. “And he loved to make people laugh.”

“Mine was Bob Ross,” Tim offered suddenly. He had sat on the end, furthest from Jason but still close enough to be heard even in a low voice as he hugged his knees. “Not his death so much. He died before I knew who he was. But I liked to watch him paint. He made beautiful things from his mistakes. His happy accidents. It was good to hear, sometimes.”

Dick and Jason took that in silently, digesting everything Tim had said and everything he hadn’t.

“I have not experienced such an upset.” Damian’s lips twisted, not into a sneer but into something uncomfortable and hesitant. “But I can think of several who would be… that is, if they… I would…” He sucked in a rallying breath. “I did donate a month’s allowance to Stephen Irwin’s Wildlife Warriors. It was long after his demise, but it felt… appropriate.”

Tim and Damian must have heard everything, or most of it. Dick worried that Jason’s walls would slam back into place, that mortification and anger would flare again. But, to his relief, Jason seemed to recognize what the boys were offering.

“It sucks when the good ones go,” Jason said, shrugging off Dick’s arms to lean back on his hands and look up at the sky. “Especially when there are still so many bad ones sticking around.”

“I think they’d argue that they’re no better than anyone else, in the long run,” Tim hazarded as he matched Jason’s posture. “They just never stopped trying to make the world a better place, that’s all.”

Dick sighed as he leaned back as well, eyes on the clouds. Somewhere up there, far beyond what they could see, their father was scouring the universe for his best friend, the savior of Metropolis. Two heroes. Two fathers. Two good men. He believed with all his heart that they would both return, but in the meantime, he would keep making them proud.

He was surprised when Jason suddenly shifted next to him and pushed himself to his feet. 

“Hope you brats paid the waitress, ‘cause I gotta dash,” Jason said, wiping the dirt from his hands onto his jeans. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, but the blue was clear and the color had returned to his cheeks. He could have passed for an allergy sufferer rather than a man who had endured a near total breakdown only a short time ago.

“Where are you going?” Dick asked as he rose as well. Next to him, Damian and Tim followed suit.

“I promised Biz I’d water his plants while he was out…” Jason gestured at the empty blue sky. He began to walk backward, his eyes on his brothers as he headed back in the direction of his bike. “After that, I heard they’re gathering volunteers at City Hall and caravanning over to Metropolis.” His gaze flicked to the sky again. “Look for the helpers, right?”

A smile spread slowly across Dick’s face. “I’ll let Alfred know we’re going to be late for dinner.”

**Author's Note:**

> "My mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’ To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother’s words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers — so many caring people in this world.” - Mister Fred Rogers
> 
> This story sunk its teeth into me way back in June when I first watched Won't You Be My Neighbor and bawled like a baby. It's a relief to finally have it written down somewhere, even if I bawled this time, too. My buttons may not be your buttons, so it's okay if it doesn't click with you. But you will pry little Jason Todd being comforted by Mister Rogers out of my cold, dead hands.


End file.
